Aircraftman 1st Class 901926, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. Died 02/05/1941. Age 19.

 

Born Uxbridge in 1921 the only child of Montague Henry Everix and his second wife Mary Catherine nee Hassett. He also had a half brother Leonard b. 1911 & half sister Queenie b. 1909. Their father Montague was a prisoner of war in Germany during World War 1. In 1939 his mother Mary was living at Windy Ridge, Manor Road, Felixstowe while his father was in Runcorn working for the Air Ministry Works Directorate.

 

Pilot Officer P R Gillespy and Aircraftman V M Everix where killed in a forced landing near Fallujah, Iraq, in an Audax K7543 from 4 Service Flying Training School, 2 May 1941. They are buried at Habbaniya War Cemetery.

 

Habbaniya was a peace-time Royal Air Force station, maintained under the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1930 which permitted a British base west of the Euphrates, and the permanent Headquarters of the R.A.F. in Iraq. Habbaniya War Cemetery was originally the pre-war R.A.F. cemetery, but it was used during the war not only for R.A.F. casualties but for the burial of soldiers killed during the 1941 operations, and for all servicemen who died through illness or accident while serving in PAIFORCE. Its situation in the desert, 300 miles by air from our nearest bases on the Persian Gulf and 500 miles from our bases in Palestine, made it particularly vulnerable when in 1941, it was threatened with attack by Iraqi forces. There were no operational units on the station, but there was No. 4 Flying Training School and a number of trainer aircraft. Early in April work commenced on fitting guns and bomb racks to these aircraft, and by the end of the month some seventy had been made serviceable for operations. At the same time intensive training courses were instituted in bomb aiming and air gunnery. When the Iraqi forces besieged Habbaniya this improvised striking force was the backbone of constant air-raids on the enemy positions and, together with the nightly raids on their gun emplacements by the R.A.F. Levies defending the station, was mainly responsible for the withdrawal of the Iraqi forces from the plateau adjoining the airfield during the night of 5/6th May